Thursday, 30 April 2015

I have blogged before about my love for the Blues singers I
watched perform over 50 years ago. I saw John Lee Hooker sing 'Boom Boom' in London in 1960, the year this was recorded. He was at the
forefront of the electric guitar adaption of the Delta Blues. But I
have an admission to make. I bought Johnny Tillotson's 'Poetry in Motion' in the same year. My excuse was that I had fallen in love
with Jenny, the salesgirl in the local record shop. She had brush
curls, a pink hairband and wore pleated, fluffed-out dresses you may
remember from early Elvis Presley movies. All tight belts and lots of
buttons. She loved Pat Boone. She tried to get me to buy 'April
Love', but 'Poetry in Motion' was as far as I would go with this music.
Boone was, like Tillotson, from Jacksonville, Florida. But it's
Clarksdale Mississippi for me. Hooker for ever. Here are two more 1960's recording for you. Enjoy. There's a lot more about music in Left Field

Wednesday, 29 April 2015

It's 20 years since the War ChildHelp
album – the brainchild of Andy Macdonald and Tony Crean of Go!
Discs, the then record label for Paul Weller, Billy Bragg, the
Housemartins and The Beautiful South. The idea was to raise funds for
War Child's work in war-torn Bosnia by recording an album in studios across Europe on Monday 4 September 1995 and have it on sale in shops by Saturday, 9 September - less than a week from start to finish. On that Monday more than 20 artists performed in multiple studios across Europe. Oasis, Blur, Radiohead, Orbital, Massive Attack, the Stone
Roses, Neneh Cherry, Sinéad
O’Connor, Paul Weller, Paul McCartney and Portishead were some of the contributors. Weller recorded 'Come Together' at Abbey Road with Paul McCartney. Read about this experience here. Brian Eno
produced the album and was responsible for making sure the recordings
were ready for pressing in time for the Saturday release. Racing
against the clock, he said of the experience, ‘Enjoyable panic, but
I went into Hitler mode in the last few minutes.’ Help
sold over 70,000 copies on the first day, becoming the
fastest-selling album in British music history andraising more than £1.5 million. I
was responsible for deciding what to do with the money, working from the principle that the Help money should not be solely for those parts of Bosnia Hercegovina where War Child was represented but for those in need across the whole country. So we funded school meals in central Bosnia, support for a mobile medical clinic in Bihać, the supply of premature baby units to Banja Luka, food and clothing to orphanages in Zenica, artificial limbs for wounded children,the purchase of a
refrigerated truck to supply insulin, as well as baby
milk, contraceptives and even funding for mine clearance programmes.
Linda McCartney supplied twenty-two tonnes of her veggie burgers
which we delivered to three Bosnian cities. Help
monies were also used towards the running of the War Child bakery and
to expand the charity’s music programmes to include towns in Republika Srpska such as Trebinje. Here is Radiohead's 'Lucky' being recorded with film from BiH. Watch this and then read
more about Help at Left Field

Tuesday, 28 April 2015

Without
Anne Aylor I would never have written Left Field'.Author
of two books, No Angel Hotel and The Double Happiness Company,
she is now working on her third novel set in the Spanish Civil War.
Much of her research has involved finding out about the US Abraham Lincoln Brigade volunteers. 'The House of Wild Beasts', a chapter
from this forthcoming publication,
won the 2014 Historical Novel Society Award. Every June she runs a week-long creative writing course – in Spain! This year, after her writing retreat, we are staying on to celebrate
my 70th birthday - “Ten years before I saw the light of morning a comradeship of heroes was
laid.” My own birth year was one more than Christy
Moore's in Viva La Quince Brigada, which honours those who fought against fascism in Spain. Check
out his amazing Glasgow gig. A free copy of 'Left Field' to the first person who correctly names where this photo of Anne was taken. Reply to messages at my FB.Christy Moore Viva La Quince Brigada

Monday, 27 April 2015

This
July the Pavarotti Music Centre (PMC) is hosting the 13th Mostar Blues & Rock Festival. In that time they have presented
names
such as Ten Years After, Ana Popović, Vlatko Stefanovski, Big Brother & The Holding
Company, Sugar Blue, Snowy White, Dr. Feelgood, Tito & Tarantula,
Deborah Coleman, Danny Shephard, as well as regional artists: Majke,
Partibrejkersi, Dado Topić & Telephone Blues Band, Zdenka Kovačiček,Yu Grupa and others. 13
years of dedication and hard work from Mili Tiro, Oharn Maslo (Oha)
and others at the Centre. Today the PMC is very much alive ... and kicking arse. Get to Mostar this year if you can. Check this out: InnesSibun and Coco Montoya, 2014

Sunday, 26 April 2015

Here
is a clip from another Stop the War gig I helped organise, June 2007 Tom Morello at the Scala in London.On the bill with him were Ed Harcourt, Frank Turner and MC Mark
Steel.It was a great evening but not as exciting as 7
years earlier when Morello and Rage Against the Machine
caused the doors of the NY Stock Exchange to be closed when
they played outside They and their fans stormed the building and
it had
to lock its doors during the middle of the trading day. Morello was
quoted: "Our
protest stopped trading at the stock exchange for the last two hours
of the day. I guess we stopped downsizing
for
at least a couple of hours." Who
says music can't change anything. And
here's a Monday morning treat – Tom performing solo in Cuba

27 November 2005 at the Astoria in London (now buried beneath Cross Rail's new station at Tottenham Court Road). I helped organise this gig for the Stop the War Coalition with Rachid's UK manager, Rikki Stein. What a night! And what a great surprise when Mick Jones turned up to join them for 'Rock the Casbah'. And we raised some serious money for the anti-war movement. Music has been an important part of my life: the Pavarotti and Friends concerts, the daily events that took place at the Pavarotti Music Centre, music workshops in Sarajevo and Mostar, smuggling Island Records Bob Marley exhibition into war-torn Mostar, organising gigs for Stop the War. And I have seen music change the lives of others around me. Greetings to all the great musicians you will come across in Left Field - Oha, Teo, Eugene, Senad Suta, Atilla Aksoj, Dubioza Kolektiv, Siktar, Mostar Sevdah Reunion, Deicola Neves, EM, Paul Belben and so many others. Enjoy 'Rock the Casbah'

Thursday, 23 April 2015

“Assume a virtue if you have it not” - Shakespeare.April 2015: UK response to more than 800 drownings in Mediterranean … Royal Navy 'flagship' to join search-and-rescue operations. Two smaller cutters or patrol vessels will be sent as well as three Merlin helicopters. (France has committed a plane for a fortnight in September and a patrol boat for the month of November). March 2011: UK 'contribution' to NATO regime change in Libya which was major cause of the chaos in area … More than 26,000 air sorties, almost 10,000 of them involving missile strikes of some kind. More than 3,000 vessels were boarded to enforce the arms embargo. Once the operation was up and running, it was in government's words, 'relatively easy to sustain'. (My source: The Guardian)

Wednesday, 22 April 2015

At
Victoria Station, alongside platform announcements for Chatham and
Orpington, there used to be the international routes. In the 60s,
I’d board the train for Dover, ferry to Belgium and on to Cologne, Munich, Salzburg, Ljubljana
and Zagreb.

At
Ostend, I always hoped to be the only passenger in my 3rd class couchette—not because I wanted to be alone—but because it meant
that the train would fill up in Germany with
Turkish gastarbeiters, setting out on their annual holidays.

They
would always have two suitcases, one for clothes and the other filled
with food and drink which they generously shared with strangers.
There were kebabis,
spinach and cheese borek,
hummus, pitta bread, dates and honeyed cakes. We would drink
raki through the night.

After
a short sleep, I would wake up as the train travelled through the
Karamanka Alps into Yugoslavia. The Austrian customs officers in their
smart, blue uniforms were replaced by the Yugoslavs in their drab
brown when they came on board at Jesenice; the only other colour, the
red stars on their caps.

30 hours after leaving
Victoria Station the train arrived in Zagreb. All cities have their unique characteristics;
defined by their architecture, climate and their people. What is
rarely referred to are their smells. Zagreb’s was the coal burned
in the steam engines: lignite from Breza in Bosnia, a soft brown fuel
somewhere between coal and peat. This smell characterised the
Croatian capital until steam engines were replaced with electric and
diesel.

I would
take the No 4 tram. The blue
cars clanked and screeched their way over the bumpy rails, the driver
hunched over a lever which was both accelerator and brake.
Pedestrians ran when they heard the tram’s bell, a double
dang-dang. It was like being on the set of The Third
Man.

Today
I return to London from
Barcelona
and because of my brain op it's not a two hour EasyJet flight, but eight on
TGV via Paris. Plenty of time to read a book. It will be Carlos
Ruiz Zafón's The Prisoner of Heaven - set in
this city. I struggled with his The Shadow of the Wind but my writer-wife
Anne tells me this one is much better. I will let her know if I agree
when I see her again – she is returning on Easyjet tomorrow.

Tuesday, 21 April 2015

Oha’s enthusiasm for people was marked by equal enthusiasm for music. When he heard a performance he liked, his face would break into a smile as he grabbed the nearest person to him to hug. I have even watched while he embraced a loudspeaker. (Oha is Orhan Maslo)

Teo wanted nothing more than to return to pre-war days when no one took any notice of religious or ethnic differences. He was one of the first to take his guitar into the communities of his former enemies. (Teo is Teo Krilic)

Uruguayan writer and socialist Eduardo Galeano, died last week. He described himself as a writer "obsessed with remembering" and advised close attention to walls since "walls are the publishers of the poor." RIP

Monday, 20 April 2015

“There
is more to life than increasing its speed.” ~ (Mahatma
Gandhi )
Yesterday in Barcelona was a slow day for me, but perhaps the most
important one since arriving here. I was rushing to get out, fell in the shower and cut my head close to where I'd had the
subdural haematoma op. In a panic and thinking I'd set off
another internal bleed, everyone else was fortunately calmer.
I spent 8 hours at St Pau hospital and was given a CT
scan
– all was
OK.
I had plenty of time to watch the people around me, patients and
health staff. The equal of our UK NHS here. Sorry – perhaps better.
Just
had to show my EU health card for treatment. Today
I think I'll
just walk around the streets and visit my grandson – slowly.

“Britain
will not support any future search and rescue operations to prevent
migrants and refugees drowning in the Mediterranean, claiming they
simply encourage more people to attempt the dangerous sea crossing,
Foreign Office ministers have quietly announced.” Guardian 27 Oct
2014 ... Six
months later ... “Up
to 700 people are feared to have drowned when a fishing boat capsized
off Libya, in what could prove to be the worst disaster yet involving
migrants being smuggled to Europe across the Mediterranean.”
Guardian 19 April 2015. Our response can only be beyond any (polite) words

Saturday, 18 April 2015

“Music is that little bottle in which you put all your emotions” … “They were unable to kill our songs” … “The war profiteers know what they fought for. I fought with the violin and songs. They were my machine gun and pistol” … “I'm lucky to be in a mixed marriage so we celebrate everything. We do Eid, Christmas, Easter.” ... “Pah, I'm fed up with all the holy days – I'd rather skip them all.” … “This bag of shrapnel is from my shelled flat. They are the reasons why I left. I have to know the reasons why I left. Probably they (on the other side) have the same things”

Friday, 17 April 2015

When Blues musicians arrived in London in the early 60s, their first booking was often at
the Bromley Court Hotel, Catford; a short bus ride from my home. This gig was a 'warm-up' for their appearance at the Marquee Club in Oxford Street. Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Howlin’ Wolf and Bo
Diddley appeared at the Court with British stars such as John Mayall, Alexis
Corner and Spencer Davis. With
his pencil moustache, Telecaster, sharp suits and from Rolling
Fork, Mississippi - Muddy
Waters “Got my Mojo Working”. Read more about all this at 'Left Field.'

Thursday, 16 April 2015

The Guardian published an article recommending the 10 best books set in Barcelona. Of these ten I have read five of them. I am not a
prolific reader so 50% is high for me and says something about this
city. And I've read 'Homage to Catalonia' at least five times. Am
staying within site of Sagrada Familia and Orwell was right about the
building - the Republic should have removed it! But I am not here to read 'Homage to Catalonia' a 6th time, but to work on "Left Field" and visit my grandson, Rhys.

Tuesday, 14 April 2015

"I
never got the chance to thank you for all your support and kindness
in the process of the creation of Mostar Sevdah Reunion. Our lives
have changed thanks to you, Eugene Skeef and Music Center Pavarotti …
without you – no Mostar Sevdah Reunion, no me as a producer,
no sevdah on the World Music map … I hope that one day, city of
Mostar will officially recognize your priceless contribution to the
town itself. In a meantime, I will do it for myself! Thank you for
your kindness, humanity, love and vision." Dragi Šestić, music
producer ( Listen to Mostar Sevdah Reunion )

Monday, 13 April 2015

Brian
Eno: "This
is an excellent and inspiring book. David's stubborn and yet
self-effacing commitment to his ideals carried him through many
daunting situations, and his sense of humour kept him able to see the
funny side."

Dorothy
Byrne,
Head of Channel 4 TV News and Documentaries: "What a life this
man has led!"

Sir
Tom Stoppard: "David
Wilson has lived a life and a half … the broken world needed people
like David then; it still does and always will."

David
Hencke,
former Guardian Westminster correspondent and part of Exaro team,
presently exposing paedophilia in high places: "This is the
work of a determined guy who is prepared to expose fraud and
injustice wherever he finds it."

Orhan
Maslo (Oha):
"One of the key people of my life has finished his book and it
will soon be out. There is a chapter that describes the times we
spent together. What good times we had while giving spirit to the
Pavarotti Music Centre. This was after my orphanage times and steered
me to who I am and what I do today. Thank you David"

Manuela
Beste,
the first person to read draft of
book:
“This is surely going to be your core readership - the 1960's
generation who grew up with you, agitated like you, still hold true
to these struggles like you and today's new generation of angry,
frustrated, hopeful young people who are organising for a better and
fairer world ...I found the book interesting, moving,
thought-provoking, instructive. It thoroughly held my attention .. I
wish I could think in visual metaphors like you."

Gianni
Scotto, Assoc Professor, University of Florence: “I
was so surprised to hear the most insightful and radical political
analysis of the conflict speaking with you.”

Sebastian
Balfour, Emeritus Professor, LSE: “A vivid account of a life fought
for justice, full of indignation and tenderness.

Mandla
Langa,
author of The
Lost Colours of the Chameleon,
and winner of 2009 Commonwealth Prize: "David Wilson is a
national treasure."

Ed
Victor literary agency: “Your relationship with your elderly father
is described in such beautiful style that it would not be out of
place from a literary novel by an established and seasoned author.
The same goes for your childhood years at boarding school ... The
'Balkan years', including the bits where you fall in love with a
Croat and the adventures of the mobile bakery could be from a
historical thriller. The whole 'War Child' section could be an expose
about the problems and hidden lives of charities, especially when
they become powerful.”

Sunday, 12 April 2015

"It
is no exaggeration to say that visiting Mostar that day was truly one
of the most beautiful moments of my life. For two years, we had been
raising funds through concerts and albums to build the Music Centre
and to eventually see its completion, and to witness some of the
beautiful and talented children of Mostar performing for us on their
inaugural day, was simply a joy. The children that day were so very
patient. We were delayed on our journey by something beyond our
control, the weather! But, when we eventually arrived in the
beautiful city that was overwhelming, and the people of Mostar
certainly proved that they have something very special that is their
future. Those children are an example to us all and a tribute to
Mostar. If music is central to a person’s life, it can be something
very special and life-affirming. The Music Centre was built for the
children - I can only hope that making music helps in the healing
process and that it will bring joy to the children of Mostar for
many, many years to come." Pavarotti describes the opening of his centre in Mostar, 1997 Read more about his visit to Mostar at Left Field

I helped organise this gig for Stop the War. Rachid Taha Band with Brian Eno + Nitin Sawhney, Imogen Heap and Mick Jones from The Clash. Won't ever forget 'Rock the Casbah' Read more about the gig at LEFT FIELD

It was one of the last gigs at London's Astoria which today has disappeared beneath Crossrail's new station at Tottenham Court Road

Thursday, 9 April 2015

My grandson, Rhys (named after my Welsh grandfather) hasn't yet ordered his copy of Left Field - despite the fact that I wrote the memoir with him in mind. I am visiting him next week in Barcelona so will have the opportunity to let him know that it is now in the publication planning stage. So neither he nor you have long to wait.

Wednesday, 8 April 2015

A
regular guest at our house was Karl Henrik Køster, a Danish
neurosurgeon who wrote for The
Lancet
and who’d met
my father in
Bergen-Belsen.They became friends and my sisters and I called him Uncle Karl.

He always arrived with a large bottle of Cherry Heering, a Danish
liqueur, and gifts for us children. I remember the brightly-painted wooden soldier with its red tunic and blue trousers.
It had moveable arms and a detachable lance which was quickly lost.

Karl
Henrik had been in the Resistance. One day, when leaving his apartment he passed the
Gestapo on the stairs. They asked him where Dr Køster could be
found. As he left the building he passed the body of a medical
student shot in the back. He then followed the same route as those he
had helped save and escaped by boat to Sweden. He made his way to the
UK and joined the British army.

Karl
committed suicide in the 1980s and didn’t live long enough to see
the 1998 Disney film made about his life,
Miracle at Midnight,
directed by Ken Cameron which starring Sam
Waterson as Karl and Mia Farrow as his wife, Doris.

I
recently came across words of his explaining why he acted as he did.
“It was the natural thing to do. I would have helped any group of
Danes being persecuted. The Germans' picking on the Jews made as much
sense to me as picking on redheads.”I had contact at a young age with
people who’d led dangerous political lives. Karl Henrik’s booming
voice and wry humour has stayed with me. It has always been important
to be able to see the funny side of the grimmest experiences.
There is always a Springtime
for Hitler. Read more about Uncle Karl in Left Field.

Tuesday, 7 April 2015

Ambrose
Bierce said that politics is ‘a strife of
interests masquerading as a contest of principles. The conduct of
public affairs for private advantage.’ This 'Politics' takes place in a box with shared rules of engagement. If,
like me, you believe there is nothing ‘shared’ about our world,
the only place for politics is on the streets, not in a debating
chamber full of Right Honourables who ridicule each
other, then go off to have cosy lunches together. For
my mother, my extra-parliamentary activities made me an extremist.
But it’s like ships at sea. If a fleet of ships are sailing
together, a lone ship on the horizon is viewed as occupying an extreme position. However, from the point of view of the lone
ship, you have to be a damn good sailor. Read more on my political life at Left Field

Had to have a reference to our feral cat, Juba, at the Pavarotti Music Centre. Here she is in 1998. She learned to use the toilet and she disappeared back into the streets when Anne left Mostar. Read more about her at Left Field

Monday, 6 April 2015

"The
blue cars clanked and screeched their way over the bumpy rails, the
driver hunched over a lever which was both accelerator and brake.
Pedestrians ran when they heard the tram’s bell, a double
dang-dang. It was like being on the set of The Third Man."